The Backstory of Major Insights: Why I Started This Podcast

Major Insights has been a long time coming.

The idea originally started around 1.5 years ago when I was trying to think of a project that I could make real impact in.

Nearly everyone, though, shared one thing: stress. Some were overwhelmed by the pressure of choosing the “right” major or trying to figure out what career actually matched their interests. Others were worried about performing well enough in high school to even get into a good college, let alone succeed once they got there. The future felt like this huge, looming thing and no one really knew how to approach it. That’s when I realized this was a real problem and I wanted to do something about it.

So, I being interviewing a few people, college students, professionals, and even fellow high schoolers. I formed a small team to help out, and while finding a meaningful problem and acting upon it was exciting, reality set in: we are high schoolers, and coordinating schedule is hard. Between school, extracurriculars, and just life, getting everyone together for full production cycles—including planning, recording, editing, and publishing a single episode—wasn’t realistic.

That’s when I recalibrated the format of the whole podcast.

Episodes originally ran around 45 minutes, deep dives that felt polished, but were hard to produce and even harder for busy students to keep up with. So I trimmed them to 15 minutes: short, focused, and perfect for a scroll break or walk to class. That shift made the podcast feel more intentional, less about big stories, more about sharing real insight that fits into the chaos of teen life.

Production is still a whole process, though and it takes real time and energy. So I’ve started exploring creative ways to streamline some episodes. One experiment I’m excited about? Turning PDF guides into podcast episodes using text-to-voice tools. It’s a way to blend my curiosity for tech with the mission of making helpful content.

Major Insights is constantly evolving. But at its core, it’s always been about giving high school students a place to feel a little less alone in the stress of choosing a path. I’m so excited to share what’s coming next!

Let’s figure it out together!